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12-01
*Associate Professor and Extension Range Specialist and Associate Professor and Extension Livestock Specialist, The Texas A&M University System
ducing animals from one type of vegetation and/or topog-
raphy to a very different type of range can reduce animal
performance until the animals learn the new environment,
which can take up to a year.
Distance to Water
Livestock need free-choice access to water. When their
water intake is restricted, milk production drops, feed
intake is lowered, and gain in offspring is reduced.
Several factors influence the amount of water that
grazing animals require. More water is needed as increas-
es occur in live weight, lactation, physical activity, air
temperature, salt intake, and dry matter intake. Less water
is required when the forage has a high water content and
for animal species and breeds that use water more effi- Figure 1. Cow fitted with a GPS collar to determine areas of
ciently. use and non-use within pastures.
Table 1. An example of the effect of distance to Figure 2. GPS locations (green dots) for cows show that cows
avoided the south end of this pasture where the rockiest ter-
water on forage use. rain was located when given access to water only at the north
Distance from Water, miles % Use end. Concentric rings indicate 0.5 and 1 mile distances to
water.
0-0.5 50
0.5-1 38
1-1.5 26
1.5-2 17
2-2.5 12
The authors wish to acknowledge Lew Hunnicut, Bryan Davis, and Clay Nicklas for
their support and cooperation during the GPS collar study mentioned in this publication.
nagement Educ
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